The Science Behind 'Breaking Bad' : NPR The Science Behind 'Breaking Bad' Embed Embed The Science Behind 'Breaking Bad' The Science Behind 'Breaking Bad' Embed Embed Email December 23, 20111:00 PM ET Cooking crystal meth is just "basic chemistry" for Walter White, the fictional chemistry teacher and anti-hero of the TV drama "Breaking Bad." Organic chemist Donna Nelson serves as science adviser to the show; she explains how the series' writers work to get the science right. IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. If you haven't seen the TV show "Breaking Bad," get it on your Netflix queue because at the center of the action is Walter White. He's the show's chemistry teacher turned meth maker turned anti-hero. This month the Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, even NPR's FRESH AIR named the show as one of the top 10 TV shows of 2011. The show's fourth season just ended, and if you haven't seen it, you'll have a couple of months to catch up before the last season, Season 5, gets started.

And if you have seen the show, you know a bit about science. You've probably been pleasantly surprised about how accurate the science is. Well, that is no accident. Joining me now to talk more about it is the show's science advisor. Donna Nelson in her day job is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. She joins us from there. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Oh, thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be here. FLATOW: How'd you get such a good job like that? NELSON: Oh, it's been - it's just been amazingly fun. I'm a member of the American Chemical Society, and in its magazine, the Chemical and Engineering News, there was an interview of Vince Gilligan when he had first started the television show "Breaking Bad." And in that interview, he was stating how important it was to him that he get the science right for the show.

But he talked about how he didn't have that much of a science background, and none of his writers had an extensive science background, and so they were having to go to the Web and Wikipedia in order to get science content. And he made a statement in that article that he would welcome constructive criticism from knowledgeable sources. And in looking at that, I realized it was organic chemistry, and I've been here, this is all I've ever done is teach organic chemistry, and I thought: I can do that. So I volunteered. FLATOW: That's great. Let's play a clip from the show so people get a little bit of flavor, if they haven't seen "Breaking Bad," about what's happening there. So let me cue that up now. (SOUNDBITE OF TELEVISION PROGRAM, "BREAKING BAD") BRYAN CRANSTON, ACTOR: (As Walter White) I know alkynes, diolefins, trienes, polyenes. The nomenclature alone is enough to make your head spin. But when you start to feel overwhelmed, and you will, just keep in mind that one element, carbon. Carbon is at the center of it all. There is no life without carbon.

FLATOW: Now that is the teacher, the character Walter White, played by... NELSON: Yes, by Bryan Cranston. FLATOW: Bryan Cranston, and that is sort of a tame part of the program, where he's actually teaching chemistry to the class there, right? NELSON: Yes, that was one of the scenes in which he was actually teaching organic chemistry to the high-schoolers, and that scene is very interesting, at least to me, because they appealed to me and said, you know, we want to teach - we want to present him teaching about alkynes to these high school students, what would be appropriate for him to say? And they had written a few things, and there were, you know, some errors, and I mean that's really basic organic chemistry. And so I just wrote them back a little bit about the nomenclature of alkynes and, you know, tried to fill them in a little bit. And a lot of what I said was used in that very introduction. It was really amusing to see them, you know, use the material. And at the end of that, they had said, well, is there anything that he would have written on the blackboard?

And so I drew out some structures and sent them to them by email. And I was just amazed. They drew up on the blackboard exactly what I had sent them. FLATOW: Of course this is a chemistry teacher who finds out that he can make a lot more money making methamphetamines using his chemistry knowledge than he can teaching school. NELSON: Yes, and he's a very good organic chemist. He's an excellent organic chemist. And so he makes excellent meth. And I'm always very fast to say that that is not what we do in our labs at the University of Oklahoma or in any of our classrooms. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) FLATOW: Are you ever fearful that he'll give away the recipe, the real way - does he ever give away the real way to chemically make meth in a lab on the show? NELSON: Oh, do they do that? Are you asking that? No, they don't. That was actually one of the concerns of a lot of people, but Vince Gilligan has been very clever. You know, there are multiple ways to make meth.

And so although his scenes are very accurate, he will sort of (unintelligible) together parts of different syntheses, so that if you just simply followed the one synthesis as it's presented, you wouldn't come out with methamphetamine. FLATOW: I've got another cut I want to play here that sort of gives a little bit more of the flavor of the show, when - on the darker side. NELSON: OK. (SOUNDBITE OF TELEVISION PROGRAM, "BREAKING BAD") CRANSTON: (As Walter) They use reductive amination to yield methamphetamine, four pounds. UNIDENTIFIED MAN, ACTOR: (As character) No pseudo? CRANSTON: (As Walter) No psuedo. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (As character) So you do have a plan? Yeah, Mr. White! Yes, science! (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) FLATOW: That's one of his drug dealers telling him that he's very happy to know science because it's making him a lot of money. NELSON: Yeah, yeah, and so, you know, it's a very unusual show.

And when this first came about and I had to decide whether I wanted to, you know, try to assist them, originally I was thinking, well, you know, would I want to get involved in something like this? And then after watching a few episodes of the show I realized this is not glorifying drug-making at all because he has a very hard life. You know, I mean, starting out he was in his underwear in the desert, and you know, the sand and getting scraped up, and then later he gets, you know, beat up and shot at and all sorts of fights. And I can't imagine somebody looking at that and saying, yes, that's exactly the type of life I want to lead. So I thought, well, you know, they're going to either have a hit show with good science portrayed or with bad science portrayed. And of course for scientists, when we see science portrayed badly, you know, inaccurately on television or in the movies, it's like fingernails on the blackboard. So I thought, well, you know, I'll help them. And of course I can't help them on the illicit meth scenes, the illicit meth lab scenes, but they get assistance from the DEA.

I'm not their only science advisor. They have many advisors, and I think I might have been the only one on the high school chemistry scenes, but they have many DEA agents helping them. FLATOW: Let's go to a call from Mitchell(ph) in Chicago. Hi, Mitch, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. MITCHELL, CALLER: Hi, Ira. I love SCIENCE FRIDAY. FLATOW: Thank you. Got a question for us? MITCHELL: Yeah, actually I wanted to say I've always been interested in chemistry, ever since I was little, but when I started watching this show, I decided to go back to college to study chemistry. FLATOW: Wow, so that was an impetus, a catalyst, as they would say in chemistry? MITCHELL: Yeah, a catalyst. NELSON: That's actually wonderful. That's absolutely wonderful. I think that Vince Gilligan would be thrilled to know that his show is having that sort of an influence. MITCHELL: I can't wait for the next season. It's not coming soon enough. FLATOW: It's the last one. NELSON: Thank you. FLATOW: Thanks, Mitch.

MITCHELL: Thank you. FLATOW: Thanks for calling. Is he really concerned, the producer, is he really concerned about, you know, encouraging people to learn about chemistry on each episode? Does he have a little bit of real chemistry on it, or has that sort of gone... NELSON: Yeah, I think so, yes. He really does. And he was very concerned about getting the science right. He was. I was really delighted to see this in him because, you know, for so long there's been this sort of a myth that you can't portray good science or accurate science and actually have an interesting show. And I think that this show proves that that is a myth. It is entirely possible to present science accurately and have a hit show. And I really hope that what he's done - and of course this has been done by other television shows, you know, "CSI," et cetera... FLATOW: "Big Bang Theory." NELSON: But it - I hope that it will inspire others to follow his example. FLATOW: So you must be sad to see it going into its last season then?

NELSON: Yes, you know, it's been a wonderful show, but I really do believe that others will pick up where he's left off in this one aspect. FLATOW: Do you believe that science is having sort of a rebirth on - in the entertainment industry, on television, perhaps in the movies with science movies and TV shows coming out? NELSON: Yeah, I think it perhaps is. I know that many of the scientists are trying to become more available now as science advisors, and the National Science Foundation is really trying hard to further this. And you know, there have been even discussions in Congress about what we need is a hit television show that portrays good science. And that's been said for a long time. And of course like I mentioned, there are many shows that already fill that, such as "CSI," but this is the first time that we've had one, I believe, on organic chemistry per se. FLATOW: I would have never thunk it myself, being - having done so terribly in chemistry in my own lifetime, that a hit show would be based around organic chemistry.

NELSON: Yeah, well, I say that, you know, it's a lifetime goal trying to teach organic chemistry, to make it easy, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm ever going to achieve it in my lifetime. But we do try. FLATOW: Do you use the same teaching methods that he does in front of that classroom? NELSON: No, not really. Of course I'm teaching at the graduate level, and the chemistry that I'm teaching is more difficult. I'm teaching undergraduate and graduate both, but it's just - it's a little more advanced than what he gets into. His is really sort of a lower level. And when you get more to the higher levels, you have to teach more pattern recognition. It can't possibly be just straight memorization. I think the key to making it easier is the pattern recognition and, you know, relating just simple rules to be able to absorb the mass amount of material and draw patterns across the material. That's what will make it easier.

FLATOW: And what makes this show interesting to viewers, I guess, is that it deals with the drug world, which a lot of people know a lot about, but it uses that as, so to speak, the catalyst to talk about the science itself... NELSON: Yeah, I think that much of the science is so spectacular that to me it seemed to almost become a separate character in the show. And when I mentioned that to Vince, he said yes, that he thought that was the case. And so I don't know if he actually intended that from the beginning, but that's the way it's worked out, and I think it's wonderful. FLATOW: So people would expect, like a character, it to show up every week, right? You'd tune in see what he might be talking about, what the science might be in that episode. NELSON: Yeah, a different type of science or a different little take on science or, you know, something interesting about science. I think it's been wonderful. It was just so much fun participating in this. I had a terrific time, and I would strongly recommend other scientists who are considering doing this to go ahead; it's a lot of fun.

FLATOW: Well, we'll see what happens, and do you know what happens in the fifth season yet? NELSON: No, I don't, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to tell you. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) FLATOW: Just between us. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) FLATOW: Thank you, and good luck to you. We'll - maybe we'll see you on another TV series. You never know. NELSON: Well, thanks. I mean, I would love it. It's been a terrific amount of fun. I've really enjoyed it. FLATOW: Thank you very much, Dr. Nelson. NELSON: Thank you. FLATOW: Donna Nelson in her day job is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, and she joined us from Norman. Copyright © 2011 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc. , an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR.

This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. Breaking Bad - Show News, Reviews, Recaps and Photos - TV.com EDIT Bryan Cranston ( Malcolm in the Middle ) stars in this drama focused on a mid-life crisis gone bad for an underachieving high school chemistry teacher who becomes a drug dealer after discovering he has lung cancer. With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis, and a desire to gain financial security for his family, Walter White joins forces with an old student, Jesse Pinkman ( Aaron Paul ), in a quest that follows their entry into a dangerous world of drugs and crime. Breaking Bad is produced by High Bridge Productions, Inc. and Gran Via Productions in association with Sony Pictures Television for AMC Television. Filming takes place in New Mexico. Breaking Bad has won 16 major category Primetime Emmy Awards from 2008-2014, despite not qualifying for awards in 2011.

Most notably, Bryan Cranston has won for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series four times (2008-2010, 2014) during the series' run. Aaron Paul won for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series three times (2010, 2012, 2014). In 2012, he beat fan favorite Giancarlo Esposito in the same nomination category. Anna Gunn won for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series twice (2013, 2014). The show also picked up the Outstanding Drama Series award in 2013 and 2014. The show has 98 critical wins and 168 nominations in total. Critics have largely agreed that Breaking Bad was generally one of the best shows on television, praised for its acting, writing, directing, cinematography, and feature content.

'Breaking Bad': Two Surprising Actors Who Could Have Taken Bryan Cranston's Role | Hollywood Reporter 'Breaking Bad': Two Surprising Actors Who Could Have Taken Bryan Cranston's Role 7:07 PM PDT 7/16/2012 by THR Staff COMMENTS Bryan Cranston as Walter White The Emmy-winning actor wasn't executives' first choice to play chemistry teacher-turned-meth dealer Walter White on the AMC drama. For fans of Breaking Bad, it might be hard to imagine anyone other than Bryan Cranston as Walter White. In fact, Emmy voters find Cranston so good in his portrayal of a chemistry teacher-turned-meth dealer they have rewarded him with three statuettes. PHOTOS: 'Breaking Bad': On Set With Bryan Cranston and Vince Gilligan But the actor previously best known for playing the dad on Fox's Malcolm in the Middle wasn't the first choice of network AMC or production company Sony Pictures Television. Series creator Vince Gilligan had been impressed with Cranston's 1998 guest-starring turn on The X-Files, on which he played a desperate man suffering from radiation exposure, and pushed for the actor.

But the suits had trouble envisioning Fox's suburban dad as their star and wanted to cast a big-name movie star. Their picks? John Cusack or Matthew Broderick. "We all still had the image of Bryan shaving his body in Malcolm in the Middle. We were like, 'Really? Isn't there anybody else?' " one former exec recalled in a cover story for The Hollywood Reporter. THR COVER: Bleak, Brutal, Brilliant 'Breaking Bad': Inside the Smash Hit That Almost Never Got Made But Cusack and Broderick both passed. And after Gilligan showed execs Cranston's X-Files episode, minds began to change. "That was a tricky part to cast on X-Files," Gilligan said. "We needed somebody who could be dramatic and scary yet have an underlying humanity so when he dies, you felt sorry for him. Bryan nailed it." The role was initially conceived for a 40-year-old -- Cranston is now 56 -- but AMC requested the change in age. "We pushed for him to be 50 because at 40 he's a little too young to have this crisis," former AMC vp production Vlad Wolynetz said.

"It was just so much more impactful to have him a little bit older." PHOTOS: 'Breaking Bad' Portraits from THR's Cover Shoot As for Cranston, Breaking Bad offered the type of challenge and creative freedom he craved after years on a network sitcom. "I wanted a change of pace, and whether that meant a comedy or drama, it was going to be different because I didn't need the money anymore," he said. "And I never wanted to be in a position where I should make a creative decision based on financial need. I didn't want a 'job.' I didn't need to work ever again." Breaking Bad returned for its fifth and final season Sunday night, drawing a record 2.9 million viewers in its 10 p.m. slot. Breaking 5 Bad Content Marketing Habits That Need To Be Stopped | Fast Company | Business + Innovation Breaking 5 Bad Content Marketing Habits That Need To Be Stopped Howard Schultz For President? Starbucks CEO Says No Attention Extroverts: Your Introverted Coworkers Are Quietly Judging You Fight the holiday urge to slack at work! 5 things you can do now that will pay off in the New Year. Are You Ready For An Intern This Summer?

Lisa Nirell 10.30.13 5:52 AM As a marketing leader, how do you break the bad habit of providing ho-hum content and hosting events that look like your competitors’? Let’s turn to television for some answers. For the past five seasons in the U.S., actor Bryan Cranston played Walter White, a hapless chemistry teacher turned megalomaniacal crystal methamphetamine maker in the TV series Breaking Bad. The show’s creators essentially invented a brand-new genre they call cowboy drama. The series is also unique because the protagonist turns antagonist. This series exemplifies compelling, groundbreaking content, which Breaking Bad's Creator/Executive Producer-Writer-Director, Vince Gilligan, has masterminded. Millions voted with their remote controls . Much as the series outlined grave consequences for Walter White’s errant behavior, marketing leaders will also experience negative (although less fatal) consequences for creating marginal content. Thankfully for customers, B2B companies are slowly recognizing and breaking their bad content habits. We can find guidance from organizations such as the Content Marketing Institute , MarketingProfs , and a variety of marketing automation companies. It’s important to identify these bad habits before we can eliminate them.

These beliefs can ruin a content campaign, and they are especially counterproductive when they inform live events. Here are the most common myths I hear: Source: Charles Gold 1. Marketing needs an internal "crack team" to create and disseminate the content. In reality, marketing cannot go it alone. That’s an inefficient use of marketing resources. Instead, turn to a plethora of sources, including product marketing, analysts, external experts and authors, customers, customer support, and sales. They can become part of your content ecosystem, as outlined in this graph: 2. Focus your marketing on a handful of tactics, and do those tactics well. This is no longer true. Thanks to agile marketing methods and "test and learn" models, marketer's can experiment, measure, and retool rather quickly. MarketingProf’s 2013 Content Marketing Trends study revealed that today’s B2B marketers average 12 marketing tactics. The top five most effective tactics used today are social media (other than blogs), articles, e-newsletters, blogs, and case studies.

Companies that want to stand apart from the crowd should seriously consider short webcasts, executive breakfasts, e-books, screencasts (using tools such as Articulate’s Studio ), and educational videos. 3. Webinars and other live streaming events should be broadcasts. This may have been the case five years ago. Today, they need to facilitate conversations. Kathy Meara, Content Manager for CA Technologies, has witnessed a shift in how professionals interact online during webcasts. "People talk more confidently when they are typing and can jump into the conversation." At times, Meara notices that some customers want to hijack the webinar agenda and critique the company’s products. That’s when she intervenes and introduces herself. This makes a big difference and guides them back into the conversation at hand. 4. Content needs to reflect your point of view. While provocative thought leadership pieces are essential to staking a claim in your market niche, they are not the only form of communicating. MarketingProf’s study also proved that today’s marketing leaders named "engaging our audiences" as their second biggest challenge with their content management strategy. Live polling, offering giveaways in exchange for input, contests, and surveys can allay these concerns.

Companies such as ON24 , one of my clients, provide an excellent platform with these features. 5. Content has a shelf life. This is also a myth. In today’s marketing environment, some of the best content can influence prospects for months, if not years. For example, ON24 publishes an annual Webinar Benchmarks Report. Findings derive from a database of more than 20,000 customer webcasts delivered within a 12-month period. Industry experts and customers often rely on the annual updates to design, launch, and measure the results from their own events. These five old habits were meant to be broken. In my next post, I will share seven strategies for creating positive content chemistry. Related Posts Breaking Bad: 36 things you didn't know Breaking Bad: 36 things you didn't know Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul in 'Breaking Bad' Credit: AP 1. Walter White is real. Credit: Boston University; WCBV; ABC News; KLTV; Cladwell County Sheriff’s Department While nobody has yet gone ‘full Heisenberg’, Vince Gilligan ’s message about the perils of meth production and distribution apparently failed to reach a handful of hard-up educators.

William Duncan, a chemistry teacher from Texas, was arrested for selling home-cooked meth within school grounds; in 2011, 74-year-old mathematics professor Irina Kristy was caught running a meth lab from her Boston home; North Carolina teacher’s assistant and meth chef Marc Hodges was arrested earlier this year after suspiciously purchasing 1,000 cases of matches; and Stephen Doran, a Boston teacher with stage 3 cancer, was found dealing meth and arrested in May. But perhaps the most striking case of life imitating art occurred before Breaking Bad was even on television. In 2008, an Alabama man (main photo, above) earned a place on the state’s Most Wanted list thanks to his thriving meth business. Admittedly, he was neither a teacher nor a cancer sufferer. But his name? Walter White. 2. And so is Heisenberg. Credit: AP The name Walt gives to his alter ego, “Heisenberg”, is a tip of the hat to Werner Heisenberg, one of the most important physicists of the 20th century. He won the Nobel Prize for developing the theory of quantum mechanics. 3. The cast is full of comedians.

Credit: ALAMY "If you can do comedy you can do drama," Vince Gilligan said recently of his approach to casting. "It doesn’t necessarily flow the other way." Consequently, Breaking Bad is packed with funny men – even if they’re not always given the chance to show it. Bob Odenkirk (Saul) is well known as the co-creator of US TV’s last great sketch series, Mr Show; Bill Burr (Kuby) is a stand-up comic, as are Lavell Crawford (Huell), Steven Michael Quezada (poor Gomie), and Javier Grajeda (Gus Fring’s boss at the cartel, and the man who put a severed head on a tortoise). And before he was a struggling actor, Bryan Cranston spent several months as a floundering comedian. Watch Breaking Bad now on Amazon Prime 4. Gus Fring ended his life as a zombie. For the aptly titled season 4 finale, Face Off, Vince Gilligan sought help from the prosthetic-effects team behind AMC’s zombie series The Walking Dead .

Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger made a model of Gustavo Fring’s exploded Evil-Dead-meets-Two-Face head, which was then digitally blended with actor Giancarlo Esposito’s real noggin. According to Gilligan, “ it took months ”. Gilligan got the idea for Fring's gruesome death from a real grisly ending that happened to a rocket scientist and ritualist called John Whitedale Parsons. Gilligan heard about him in Strange Angel, George Pendle's book. Parsons, who happened to practice black magic and had "some kind of sex cult going in Pasadena", according to Gilligan, "came to an unfortunate end when he was making up a batch of mercury fulminate for a special effects project. "Something went wrong and it blew up in his face. The story is that he survived with part of his face peeled off for several hours before he finally succumbed in the hospital." 5. Wendy the hooker is much healthier than she looks. Credit: AMC She was certainly perky when Jesse was around, but the show’s standout meth addict was never exactly a picture of good health.

However, Julia Minesci, the actress who played the role of “Wendy S” from 2008-2010, has run the Hawaii Ironman six times, the Germany Ironman once and“ countless marathons ”. 6. Gale’s complete karaoke video – with Thai subtitles – is on YouTube. 7. And so is the Jesse Pinkman-directed video for Twaughthammer’s "Fallacies". 8. The White family home is an actual family home. Credit: REX Far from being a drug baron’s digs or even a building dreamt up by Vince Gilligan, Walter White’s house in Breaking Bad has been the real-life home of a woman called Fran since 1973. She admits that “a lot of artistic licence” was taken with the property’s interior by the production designer and that Gilligan originally wanted to cover the pool up. And she doesn’t mind the hundreds of cars that slow down in front of her house every month. 9. Skinny Pete practised very hard for his piano solo. Jesse’s wastrel sidekick gave a virtuoso performance of Bach’s Solfeggietto in the music shop at the beginning of season five.

Charles Baker, a decent pianist and the actor who plays Pete, practised the piece for three hours every day for a month before filming. Much to Baker’s chagrin, only the intro made the cut. 10. Jesse's teeth are Gilligan's only regret The co-creator admits in the official Breaking Bad book that Aaron Paul's teeth were far too nice to be realistic for Jesse Pinkman. "One thing that sort of troubled me, looking back over the entirety of the show: Jesse's teeth were a little too perfect. There were all the beatings he took, and, of course, he was using meth, which is brutal on your teeth. He'd probably have terrible teeth in real life." They didn't get changed because "removing real teeth from actors is a real non-starter", and digitally removing them would have been very expensive. 11. The DEA's ‘Mustache man’ got the part by playing golf with Dean Norris. Credit: AMC One extra has consistently stolen the show in Breaking Bad – the man with the enormous moustache often seen in the background at the DEA offices.

Robert Sanchez, the man behind the novelty facial hair, knows actor Steven Michael Quezada (Agent Gomez) through softball and has admitted he got the part after playing golf with Quezada and Dean Norris. The retired fireman also competes in moustache competitions in his free time. 12. Walt’s Lotto code isn’t a complete dead end. Credit: AMC The coordinates that Walt hid on a Lotto ticket (N 34, 59′, 20″, W 106, 36′, 52), which sadly proved fatal for Hank, don’t actually lead to $80 million in cash, or even a few plastic barrels. Instead, they point straight to Q Studios in Albuquerque, where Breaking Bad (plus Hollywood films such as The Avengers) is shot. 13. The pink teddy bear came before the plane crash Credit: heisenbergchronicles.tumblr.com ( heisenbergchronicles.tumblr.com ) Much like how the second season of Breaking Bad pans out, with ominous glimpses of a floating pink bear and its eyeball leading to a far more sinister conclusion, so emerged the script.

Gilligan said that "it took many weeks in the writers' room to come up with the plane crash. We liked the teddy bear floating in a swimming pool and his eyeball's in the skimmer. We did not know how it got there." Once the bear was there, however, it took some shifting – which is just as well, seeing as prop designer Mark Hanson had to recruit an Albuquerque-based teddy bear artist to satisfy the show's legal department. You can spot a less burned version in the mural painted on Jane's wall. 14. Breaking Bad helps beat addiction. An Albuquerque clinic, the Sage Neuroscience Center, is using the show’s popularity to help get New Mexicans off narcotics. (The state has the highest rate of addiction in the US.) By sharing their stories of addiction, entrants have the chance to win one of two “Breaking Addiction” scholarships, which entitle them to 12 weeks of free rehabilitation treatment worth thousands of dollars. 15. Bryan Cranston was once wanted for murder.

In an interview for Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in 2011, the actor reminisced about the time he and his brother worked as waiters in a Florida restaurant where the chef was a tyrant named Peter Wong. “No matter how nice you may have been to him, he hated you,” said Cranston. “He screamed at you ... (with) a cleaver in his hand.” When the chef was found murdered, the police visited the restaurant and asked if anybody had ever expressed an interest in killing Peter Wong. "Everybody talked about killing Peter Wong," came the reply. "That's all we talked about." Unfortunately, the Cranston brothers had just resigned to ride cross-country on their motorcycles. For a while, they were suspects. 16. Gustavo Fring's restaurant is a real chicken restaurant The cast and crew ended up shooting the Los Pollos Hermanos scenes in and around a real chicken restaurant in Albuquerque, called Twisters. The show's art department painting the fictional 'chicken brothers' logo inside the building. Gilligan said: "I believe [it] stayed up for months on end.

For all I know it still might be there to this day – I hope it stays there forever."It is indeed still in place probably because Twisters has become quite the tourist attraction, with photos like this being posted to online reviews site Yelp : 17. The Salamanca Cousins even have terrifying eyelids. Credit: AMC Think the mute assassins who almost got Hank are tough? You have no idea. Daniel and Luis Moncado, the brothers who played the cousins, have both been in gangs and served time in jail. But Luis goes one better. He has the letters "F U" tattooed on his eyelids, etched there by placing a spoon behind each one. "Your eyelid is so thin the needle will go through and puncture your eye," he said . "You gotta put a spoon." 18. The first role Vince Gilligan wrote for Bryan Cranston was even more demented than Heisenberg. Credit: NETFLIX/FOX Before creating Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan was best known for his work as a writer and producer on the sci-fi series, The X-Files . It was there that his and Bryan Cranston’s paths first crossed, on the Gilligan-written episode Drive.

Cranston plays a crazed racist roofer who must drive due west at breakneck speed, or else his head will explode. Gilligan has said he “needed a guy who could be scary and kind of loathsome but at the same time had a deep, resounding humanity.” Sound familiar? 19. Blue meth really is more expensive. Since the first series of BB, in 2008, copycat drug producers around the US have been adding blue food dye to their crystal meth in an attempt to dupe their customers into thinking it is stronger, like Heisenberg’s product. Possibly for that reason, the cost of blue crystal methamphetamine has been reported to be higher than that of normal, colourless “ice”. 20. ...but not necessarily better. As many chemically minded pedants have pointed out, pure methamphetamine is not blue, but colourless. 21. The Heisenberg Hat originally prevented against sunburn Costume designer Kathleen Detoro admitted that the original reason Cranston started wearing the now-infamous Heisenberg Hat is because he needed to shade his shaved head from the sun. "It became the identifable look for Walt's certain mood", she said. 22.

Belize is actually a nice place to visit. Credit: Alamy When Saul suggested to Walt that he send Hank “on a trip to Belize ” like he had done to Mike, everyone understood the euphemism – including the Belize Tourism Board. So keen were they to show that Belize was, in fact, a wonderful place, with “ great music and friendly people ”, that they extended an open invitation to the cast and crew of the series to take an all-expenses-paid holiday in the Central-American country. 23. Walt and Jesse’s cooking flashback in Ozymandias was the last Breaking Bad scene ever filmed. Shortly afterwards, the cast and crew spent a drunken night in a local bar; Cranston ended up with a tattoo of the show’s logo on his finger, much to his wife’s disgust. 24. Tuco only died because he had to Raymon Cruz, the actor who plays one of Walt and Jesse's first enemies, Tuco, was meant to terrorise them all the way through season two. He met his explosive end in season one because he became a regular on US TV series The Closer, and could no longer appear in Breaking Bad.

When Gilligan realised there was only one way Tuco's story could go, he remembered Mister Roberts, the Henry Fonda movie in which Jack Lemmon's character is "always blowing up nthings on this old navy ship with mercury fulminate." Gilligan explains in Breaking Bad: The Official Book that he was relieved to find out that mercury fulminate "kinda sorta" looked like crystal meth, and with that, one of the formative Heisenberg moments was created. Boom! 25. Seinfeld was a Breaking Bad training school. Several BB cast members had roles on Jerry Seinfeld ’s eponymous sitcom. As stingy dentist Tom Whatley, Bryan Cranston helped popularise the term ‘regifting’; Anna Gunn played Jerry’s supposedly cheating girlfriend in one episode; Bob Odenkirk played Elaine’s sexually frustrated boyfriend; and Jessica Hecht, aka Gray Matter’s Gretchen, appeared twice in two different parts. 26. Walt’s electrical wire trick (sort of) works. It turns out that burning through plastic restraints while tied to a radiator isn’t the only thing live wires are good for.

According to reports from Queensland, the technique popularised by Breaking Bad has been used by Australian inmates to light illicit cigarettes in their cells, causing the loss of some 425 television sets. 27. Tuco's grill is lurking somewhere in a river in Albuquerque Hank keeps Tuco's gold tooth grill, preserved in plastic as a paperweight, on his desk as a trophy, but later throws it in the river as a symbol of his fear. Propmaster Mark Hanson confesses that this was the most challenging prop he had to make – not least because him and his team had to make between 15 and 20 of them to make sure Dean Norris (Hank Schrader) was able to have more than one shot. Many got thrown in, and retrieved, but not all: "We did have people just off camera with hip-waders and nets to try and retrieve the cubes as they were thrown. If memory serves, I think we only lost one cube that day." 28. A 100-year-old cowboy almost starred in Season 3.

One of many discarded Breaking Bad plot lines – among them, Walt opens a pharmacy, Marie and Skyler go on a road trip – involved constant flashbacks to a cowboy in frontier times, which would somehow relate to the main story and star its own self-contained cast. Sadly, the writers couldn’t make it work. 29. Warren Buffett would gladly do business with Walter White. Credit: GETTY The billionaire investor and Breaking Bad fan (above, with Aaron Paul) recently described Walter as a “good businessman”, going on to say that the druglord “would be my guy if I ever have to go toe-to-toe with anyone." 30. Jesse Plemons, aka baby-faced psychopath Todd, has a lovely singing voice. 31. Lydia was almost married to Nicholas Brody. Credit: AMC In the original pilot for Homeland , Jessica Brody – pining wife of kidnapped Marine-turned-terrorist Nicholas – was played by Scottish actress Laura Fraser. When the producers had second thoughts, the pilot was reshot with the – in the words of co-creator Alex Gansa – “more vibrant, more sexual” Morena Baccarin.

Fraser, meanwhile, went on to play Breaking Bad’s squeamish, Louboutin-wearing drug-runner Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. 32. There was no need for Walt to rob that train. Methylamine, the chemical that incited the other Great Train Robbery of our time and led to the killing of Drew Sharp, isn’t really that hard to make . In fact, some chemists have suggested that it could be synthesised in a kitchen sink without too much difficulty. But that would have made terrible television. 33. Thanks to his father, Bryan Cranston will never run out of work. A recent New Yorker profile of Cranston revealed that his estranged father Joe – a one-time actor/director/screenwriter whose career failed to ignite – has written “several” film scripts specifically for his son to star in, including an action caper called G.R.A.B. But it wouldn't neccessarily be the worst thing Cranston has ever made. That would be The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: 34. The science is flawed for a reason.

Because of the fear that some of the series’ millions of viewers may try and use the action as a step-by-step guide to making methamphetamine, the real-life DEA advised Vince Gilligan and his team of writers on what science to include, and what to omit. “If you just simply followed the one synthesis as it's presented,” says the show’s science adviser Donna Nelson , “you wouldn't come out with methamphetamine.” 35. New Mexico is proud of Heisenberg. Credit: REX Breaking Bad was originally meant to be shot in California but the location was ultimately changed to Albuquerque, NM. That change of setting has certainly been a boon for the New Mexico tourism industry. Local businesses have taken advantage of the hit show’s worldwide popularity and cashed in by producing all manner of Breaking Bad-related products. These include: blue-meth candy, blue-meth doughnuts, locally brewed Heisenberg “dark” beer, custom-made Heisenberg Pez dispensers, as well as more traditional trolley and Segway tours. 36. There will never be a bigger Breaking Bad super-fan than Kevin Cordasco.

Last year, Vince Gilligan was contacted by the parents of 16-year-old Kevin Cordasco, who was terminally ill with an aggressive form of cancer and adored the show more than most. “There was something about the Walter White character,” explained his father. “The way he took control of his illness, and his life, that really resonated with Kevin.” Gilligan and the cast visited Kevin at home and in hospital, and during one of these visits he was asked by Gilligan what he felt was missing from the show. “He said, ‘You know what, I want to know more about Gretchen and Elliott,'” Gilligan said recently . “I want to know more about Walt’s backstory with them. I want to know what happened.’” This is how Walter’s former Gray Matter business partners ended up with a pivotal role in the final series. Gilligan even offered to tell him how the show would end; Kevin declined, saying he’d rather find out along with the rest of the world. Kevin Cordasco died soon after, and the ninth episode of season five is dedicated to him.

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Question: Who played chemistry teacher Waiter White in the American TV series "Breaking Bad"?
Answer: Bryan Cranston